the State Farm hatefest on Twitter tonight

I dove into the @StateFarm hatefest tonight, looking at the books rightists are ranting about, as _they_ - the outraged - portray them.

The samples _they_ post say queer kids exist, and talk in very simple terms about how these kids discovered that, and how they feel about that.

To the rightists, acknowledging this reality is an outrage, indoctrination, and grooming.

The crime is not of salaciousness, though they want it to appear so. The crime is not of sexual writing, though they also want that to appear true.

The crime is that we exist.

To them, the _mere existence_ of LGBTQ people is sexual, the _mere existence_ of LGBTQ people is perverted, and _acknowledging_ the mere existence of LGBTQ people, particularly kids, makes you a "pedo" who is "grooming children."

Just like always.

And @StateFarm bowed to that.

I mean, sure, National Review set it up, teeing up a hit piece that promoted all of this bullshit. Of course they did, that's what they do, that's who they are; the GOP tell you who they are every day, and you need to start believing them.

But State Farm is the one who bowed.

None of this is surprising, or _should be_ surprising. When they were running anti-trans bathroom-ban ads, they were literally shot-per-shot remakes of anti-gay ads I saw in the 90s, only instead of the scary faggot following a little boy into the bathroom, it was a little girl.

None of this is new, @StateFarm - not one word, not one shot, not one argument, not one lie, it is _all the same_ as it has ever been.

Is there no memory? Is there no recall? This isn't even 100 years ago, it's 20, during the lifetimes of EVERY PERSON WORKING FOR YOU.

And yet.

And yet, here we are. Another cowardly flinch away from the hate machine, this time State Farm, giving the rightists an unearned and undeserved and unjust victory against... who?

Queer kids.

The ones they like the most to bully.

And now, @StateFarm, they know you'll fold like the cheapest of accordions at the first howling of the monkey collective. And, being who they are, they'll come at you again.

Who will you bail on next? Figure it out now, because they'll come asking.

Probably soon.

(And by "asking," of course, I mean howling for your blood.)

I mean, @StateFarm, I can't threaten to take away my business - you lost it years ago when your agents bald-faced lied to me repeatedly about a claim.

But I know other people who are your customers.

For now, anyway.

Prototype 3.1 wrapup

So we have finally - much later than usual! - reached the end of heating season, and I've pulled prototype 3.1 out of service. I was expecting to be lucky if we could run it through March, but we made it halfway through May!

Functionally, it's worked out exactly as well as I'd hoped. It continued providing small but meaningful heat recovery throughout the operating period - enough to feel, and because of the way airflow works in our house, enough to detect upstairs at times - without overloading the house with humidity.

Based on observations from this single turnover period, I'm pleased (and somewhat surprised) to see that we don't in fact get humidity overages while the unit is still worth using for heat, even given a very wet end of heating cycle. (We've had a very wet May.) I did have to turn on a small secondary fan to push warm air out of the laundry room occasionally to prevent condensation on the window, but that's the worst it got, and we're obviously still coming out overwhelmingly ahead on cost even with that.

Also, the metal door retainer worked fine, preventing the filter from bulging much (it did a little, but a very little) and coming out of fit, a concern I had after Prototype 2. The primary filter overall shows very little sign of change of any kind, which is exactly what one would hope to see.

Structurally, the HTPLA held up very well, and the PLA feet also appear to have held up similarly well, and the plastic material I bought for the sidewalls also held up fine. But there's been one disappointment: while I used two kinds of specifically plastic-friendly adhesives, neither of them maintained a good grip on the sidewall plastics. I had to do emergency repairs on two of the four major side joints, and at the very end, a third side joint started to fail as well.

Because of this, I've only got one weekend so far of closed-face testing out of Prototype 3.1 - the weekend of May 21st-22nd. With the front face is closed off - something which in and of itself worked perfectly, no issues with the HTPLA front frame made themselves visible - the additional air pressure inside the unit made the third side joint failure visibly worse in a very short time, with an air leak forming fairly quickly. I was able to tape it together, but obviously, that's unacceptable.

Within the side-frames themselves, I'm entirely confident I can address this simply by screwing all sides together, as I did with the emergency repairs a couple of months ago. While the plastic in question is not capable of gluing adequately for long-term structural survival, the areas where no such load was placed on the object maintained their air seals perfectly well, so I think that will be a reasonable solution.

I also intend to improve the leg attachments a bit, despite the fact they held up just fine as they are. There's some unnecessary gapping that I can address, so I will, for long-term stability.

I'm more concerned about the HTPLA backplane's stability, given that it is also glued into place. Should I decide to build a prototype 4, I think I would find some way to router out a groove in the side components for structural support, given that one corner of that has adhesion issues now too. (Same cause, of course.)

Alternatively, I could just go with a different plastic for the frame, something that takes plastics glue properly. But it's quite unlikely I'll do that, given that there are summer tests I want to run with the basic design in place as it is.

So my immediate plan is a third iteration of Prototype 3, a Prototype 3.2. It will be a repaired and slightly-upgraded Prototype 3.1, using the same components. The primary changes will involve simple strengthening. It will then be reinstalled for a summer of leak, pressure, and lint collection tests.

And then we'll see what happens.